1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an interactive-type user interface device for realizing a natural interaction with a user and acquiring information needed by an application program on the basis of this interaction.
2. Related Art
An interactive-type user interface device is proposed in Japanese Patent Application No. 11-232657 filed Aug. 19, 1999 and assigned to the same assignee as this patent application.
In this interactive-type user interface device, interactive processing is carried out on the basis of a scenario prepared in association with an application program (AP) such as a program for providing travel route guidance in a vehicle. That is, the interactive (dialogue or the like) processing is executed on the basis of a scenario. The description of the interactive processing itself is made independent of the AP and the flow of the interaction is made free from the influence of the processing procedure of the AP, and a natural dialogue, i.e. a dialogue in which there is a high degree of freedom on the user side, is realized.
Also, scenarios are prepared in one-to-one correspondence with a plurality of APs. When a piece of information relating to another AP is inputted in interactive processing based on a certain scenario, the scenario corresponding to that of the another AP is loaded and interactive processing based on that scenario is executed. In this way, it is made possible for a plurality of APs to be executed selectively in the course of a single interactive processing.
However, in this interactive-type user interface device, when the number of APs becomes large, the scenario descriptions for switching among them become very lengthy.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an interactive-type user interface device which is capable of switching from one AP to another Ap in the course of a single interaction processing while requiring only, simple scenario descriptions for the interactive processing.
According to the present invention, an interactive-type user interface device for use with respect to a plurality of applications comprises a controller which acquires information needed by the applications through an interaction with a user and sends the information to the applications, by executing interactive processing based on application scenario groups provided in one-to-one association with the applications. A root scenario is provided separately from the application scenario groups for realizing application branch processing which selects and starts an application corresponding to inputted information from the user and loads the application scenario group associated with that application. The controller is capable of executing interactive processing based on another of the application scenario groups part-way through the interactive processing based on one of the application scenario groups, by executing application branch processing based on the root scenario.
Preferably, each of the application scenario groups describes therein at least dialogue information made up of request information for making an input request requesting information needed by the respective application, expected input information expected to be inputted by the user in response to the input request, and branch information corresponding to the expected input information. The controller carries out, as the interactive processing, input request processing based on the request information, comparison processing which compares inputted information from the user with the expected input information, and branch processing based on results of this comparison.
Preferably, the device further has a common data memory which stores the inputted information. The controller stores the inputted information in the common data memory and is capable of acquiring the inputted information by referring to the common data memory in interactive processing based on another application scenario group.